Last Monday ACDSee launched their newest product for digital scrapbookers & crafters. ACDSee Photo Editor 2008 is a user friendly software that offers many great features. You can try the beta until July! We have a list of the new features & how to videos

We decided to include some templates by well-known designers to help everyone get started.

Andrea Gold is a designer from Go Digital Scrapbooking. She’s well known for her templates!

She created designs for scrapbooking pages in a number of sizes and some are landscape also.

She also created some fun craft related templates such as a calender grid that can be personalized and candy bar wrappers for those special occasions.

Maggie LaMarre owns Dragonflaire Studios and is an awesome hybrid scrapbooker & card maker!

She created four cards for us. Here are a couple of them completed in her amazing style.

We hope the templates will motivate you to get creative!

Here’s a very similar idea from Peter Walsh (Oprah’s Organization Guru)

I can’t get you directly to the video but go this web page:

• Expert Minutes
• Click on Peter Walsh
• and then the first video is “The Art of Organizing your Children’s Projects”

It’s a very similar idea to mine but talks about the method so that it doesn’t stack up!

Oh, and while you are it watch the “The Best Ways to Junk your Junk Mail” Not even letting the junk mail into the house is a good idea. But have you ever sorted your mail outside in a MN winter? I did have to laugh because I watch my neighbor do this. He throws all the newspapers/flyers in the recycle bin as he is walking into the house. I made a comment to him about going from mail box to recycle bin is a smart move and he replied he has to before his wife gets a hold of the coupons. A few weeks later, I saw his wife leaning into the recycle bin and sorting the “mail” that her husband has already recycled!(By the way, our recyle bin’s look like trash cans with just a different colored lid.) It was funny and I got a chuckle out of it.

I have been busy scanning photos to add into my parents muvee dvd. A I have been scanning them, I am trying out some new tips and tricks to pass along to to all of you. Most of these tips are likely to be Epson specific, but hopefully some of them will help you to get more familiar or to play around a bit with getting photos in Photo Manager or in scanning software.

To save space and get more photos on your scanning bed,  the photos do not have to be placed in the right orientation. After the scanner preview scans, there is (in Epson Software, at least), an icon to rotate that picture. Make sure you have the correct photo selected, then click the rotate icon until the photo is right side up.

Before:

After:

If you forget to rotate the photo, or your scanning software does not have that option, you can rotate files easily in Photo Manager.

Another neat trick I tried was to use a selection to scan only part of the picture.

First, scan in the photos you want. In the photo I am working on, I only want the two faces on the right. I go to the Target Size Drop Down box and choose “Customize.”

There are many presets, but in this case I think a 2 x 2 area would be good to use. Enter the dimensions in the box, name the preset, and click save.

The 2 x2 preset is now in the drop down list.

Making sure that the picture you want to use is selected, choose the preset of your choice, and a selection box appears on the photo’s thumbnail. Use the hand tool to move the selection box to the appropriate area.

  And here is the finished scanned photo.

Since I still have many more pictures to scan, I will post more tips and tricks as I find them!

I have an Epson Perfection 3170 Photo Scanner. It was a Christmas present from my in-laws a few years back. I will never complain about them, because they always get me awesome scrapping/computer gifts. Now, that is not the only reason I love them, but it helps. Haha!!

Last year I made a movie DVD for my best friend as a Christmas present. Since we have been freinds for more years than I like to admit, I had a huge amount of non-digital photos and memorabilia that had to be scanned before I could upload them into the movie software. It was a big drag, although the outcome was worth it. The movie was a huge hit. Well, at least it was in my family!

This year, my mom asked for a movie for herself as a gift. At first I was dreading it. But since I now have ACDSee Photo Manager, the scanning is an absolute breeze! Photo Manger is much easier to handle files than the software that came with my printer.

I will set about 3 pictures on the scanner bed, depending on the orientation of the pictures. I make sure that they are not touching so that ACDSee can easily “see” them as separate files.

In Photo Manager, click on Get Photos and select your device. Click Next.

Then, check the box for Scan Multiple Documents and select the first option. Select your file format. jpgs is the most common and versatile. Click Next.

Choose the File name you want, Select Folder and Subfolder where you want the files to be placed. Click Next.

At this point, my Epson Scanning Software opens up and scans a Preview. I have my scanner set to Home Mode which gives me different levels of control. If I want to change any of my settings, my preview scans will be erased. You can also see that even though I did not place my photos on the bed exactly straight, ACDSee is able to straighten them as it selects the photos to scan. Since I am happy with all of the settings for these photos, I will click Scan. ACDSee will then scan each of the photos.

After the scan has finished, I close the scanning program and them the Photo Wizard appears. If you have more photos to scan, click scan to restart the process. If not click Next.

The Wizard is complete. Select Browse to your new images if you choose to. Click Finish and you now have three new photos scanned in a flash.

Connie has been bugging me to write about my school albums. I started doing this for my children in preschool. I get tired of all that paper & artwork that comes home from school. The kids put time into and I hate to throw it away. But I just can’t keep it all. So I came up with a solution. A digitally scrapped photo book of the school year.

When they were real young, I took pictures of their artwork and scrapped the pictures. Then saved a few pieces of their artwork and stored them in big folders.

Then they started school and I soon had class pictures, certificates, art work, homework, etc. You KNOW what I am talking about if you have kids. So over the year, I collect all this information into one big pile. At the end of the year, I sort through the work and I will talk more about the sorting process later. Once I sort through the work, I scan in the selected pieces. I then scrap all the information, keeping it simple. Send it off to my favorite photo book printer. Then in the mail, I receive a bound book containing my child’s school year. It takes up a lot less room than if I saved all those papers!

How long does it take? Probably about 15 - 20 hours for me to do a book but my children love getting their books out and paging through them.

So I am going to do a blog series on how to create these types of books and tips/hints on doing it.

Some initial pointers:

• Save all school stuff in one place. This makes that job of sorting so much easier. If it’s too large, take a picture of it and save those pictures in one place. I save mine on the computer in a digital folder called the child’s name & school year.
• Keep the digitally scrapbooked pages simple! My son’s latest book was 46 pages long. If you don’t keep them simple, you will never finish it. The point of the book is to showcase your child’s work!

And now for some examples of what I am talking about:

A 3rd grade book

A Kindergarten book

A Preschool book